297: Defense Spending, Contract Manufacturing, and Navigating Regulated Industries with Fathom CEO Rush LaSelle

About this episode

Fine tuning manufacturing like a guitar - that's the kind of parallel you can expect from this episode.

This week Chris sits down with Rush LaSelle, CEO at Fathom, recorded on site at their Hartland, Wisconsin facility over a Spotted Cow beer. Rush's path into manufacturing started at Fanuc, moved through the early and unproven days of mobile robotics, and later took him into the highly regulated world of healthcare automation.

They get into digital manufacturing today, how the Kiva and Amazon story changed the way people think about robotics and logistics, and why more defense spending doesn't automatically mean more manufacturing capacity. Rush also breaks down what this week's news around CMMC Phase 2 means for manufacturers who have already put in months of work preparing for it.

Along the way, Rush makes one of the more memorable comparisons we've heard on the show, describing the people on his shop floor as creatives, and manufacturing itself as something closer to art than you might expect.

In this episode, find out:

• How an early mobile robotics deal turned out to be worth $775 million, and what it taught the industry
• How digital manufacturing evolved from CAD drawings to full supply chain integration
• Why additive manufacturing has moved way past its prototyping only reputation
• What manufacturers need before they can scale up to meet rising defense demand
• Why the pause on CMMC Phase 2 has left some manufacturers in a tricky spot
• How Rush sees manufacturing as a form of art, and why he calls his machinists creatives
• What's driving the ongoing talent war in manufacturing, and why skilled machinists take years to develop
• Why Rush believes physical AI is the most exciting shift happening in the industry right now

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Tweetable Quotes:

• “There is a talent war going on where everybody's trying to get the right level of folks on the floor. Despite all the automation and the augmentation, you still need talented people out there. The curve to get to a level three machinist is about seven years on the job.” - Rush LaSelle, CEO at Fathom
• “You take all the data that's available in these monstrous data farms and you start applying them to physical AI. Physical AI, in our case, could be getting better control over our machines, instead of 80% of our programming done on CNCs, making it 98%.” - Rush LaSelle, CEO at Fathom
• “We've had an erosion of our industrial base. You need to have 20, 30, 50 years' worth of visibility to revenue to put hundreds of millions of dollars in place. And the government doesn't always give you that level of visibility.” - Rush LaSelle, CEO at Fathom

Links & mentions:

• Fathom Manufacturing helps companies simplify part sourcing with 25+ advanced manufacturing technologies and support services, all built around the way real programs actually move. Core capabilities include additive manufacturing, injection molding, CNC machining and sheet metal fabrication, with support across engineering, finishing, inspection, assembly and production.
• New Glarus Brewing Company philosophy is based on individuality, cooperation, and the employment of 100% natural ingredients to produce world-class, handcrafted beers like Spotted Cow, for our friends in Wisconsin.

Make sure to visit http://manufacturinghappyhour.com for detailed show notes and a full list of resources mentioned in this episode. Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty.